


The Devil's Due

by thedevilchicken



Series: The Devil You Know [2]
Category: The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Artistic Liberties, Canon-Typical Violence, Knives, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Minor Character Death, Rough Sex, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:33:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4350695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riddick fulfils his side of the deal. Nothing ends the way he'd imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil's Due

**Author's Note:**

> As with the first in the series, note that this runs with the theatrical version of _Chronicles of Riddick_ and not the director's cut! Takes liberties with what we do/don't know about Necromonger society and there's one more minor character death in this one - the tags really don't lie.

“Vaako,” said the battalion commander, his surprise quite evident for all to see. Of course, over the past few minutes he’d been pretty efficiently manoeuvred away from the rest of his battalion and so there wasn’t exactly an army to see it there in the alley off the half-destroyed main road, in the half-dark. 

Vaako smiled, coolly, but not at the commander; the guy realised just a fraction too late that Vaako’s gaze was directed over his shoulder, into the dark alley behind. Riddick stepped up silently and slit the guy’s throat from ear to ear in one quick motion, the spurt-spurt of his carotid as be bled out there in seconds catching Vaako across the thigh and dripping thickly down one leg of his pants. 

“You did that on purpose,” Vaako said.

Riddick flashed him a second’s toothy grin of confirmation as he let the body fall to the pavement with a heavy thwack of armour against asphalt. “I never got why getting dirty bothers you so fucking much,” he said, dropping into an easy squat to wipe the blood from his knife. Of course, the guy he’d just dispatched was in full armour with barely a scrap of fabric showing; he sighed and wiped the blade on his long hair instead, the sharp edge cutting straight through a swath of it while Vaako shook his head down at him in vague exasperation. 

“You _like_ wearing blood-soaked clothes?” he said, irritated, irritable, though to his credit he didn’t try to set about cleaning it off. “You find it _comfortable_?”

Riddick shrugged, popping back up to his feet with almost-clean blade in hand, a few loose strands of hair stuck to it. “You sure do bitch and moan about _comfort_ a whole lot more these days,” he said. “If Purification’s gonna cure that, let’s get this show on the road.”

Vaako looked at him in the half-light, like he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to hit him or if that’d just be a waste of their collective time. Riddick got that look pretty often and found it pretty damn hilarious, would sometimes push harder till Vaako _did_ hit him because a good fight or a good fuck was a pretty desirable outcome most of the time, or sometimes back up a step though he’d never call it backing down. Vaako probably wouldn't have either, if just to humour him. 

The sky was on fire above them as they moved on. Must've been unnerving for the people who called that planet home because hell, the Necromonger fleet was down past orbit and everyone knew what that meant. People were running in the streets, not that running was gonna help a whole hell of a lot; the Necros knew what they were doing, the fleet had done this hundreds of times before, Vaako said some of the soldiers had been around long enough to see more planets than they could actually recall and he was one of them. Foot soldiers were everywhere, all axes and blades and iron discipline. You kinda had to admire them in a way, the method to it, the strategy, kill or convert. 

Riddick and Vaako had cut through thirty, forty of them, Vaako surprisingly ruthless about it but Riddick guessed for a people who worshipped death there were worse ways to end it all. They'd been out there for six hours since the invasion had started, maybe more, the sun starting to rise on the horizon though all that really meant was Riddick pulled his goggles down over his eyes and Vaako wasn't just taking his lead down darkened alleys once the power went out, one hand squeezing too tight at his shoulder like a fucking blind man. Even the Necros hadn't perfected the art of seeing in the dark, much to Vaako's immense displeasure. He'd never been hot on accepting Riddick's help but Riddick guessed it made it a fraction better that he hadn’t actually offered it, just taken it as read. 

It was a pretty simple plan, which Riddick guessed was the best kind of plan, or at least the sort he was most suited to when it really came down to it. They were letting the planet get taken because fuck, it wasn't like Vaako was planning to put a stop to all that if and when he took his place as the new lord marshal and Riddick basically didn't give a damn whether he did or not, he’d ended enough lives in his time that getting precious about it now seemed pretty hypocritical. They'd laid low, kept pretty much out of the way whenever they could except the foot soldiers were making their way systematically through the city, flushing out any stragglers, so they had to keep moving and moving and moving, building to building. Vaako lost his coat in some filthy fucking hovel and hadn’t stopped scowling about it since. Riddick had lost one knife stuck in around a gurgling soldier’s ribs as they’d had to run. They were both pretty pissed, pretty pumped, on edge, _alive_ ; he’d’ve liked to’ve taken him up against the nearest wall but that seemed kinda counterproductive.

It was a pretty simple plan and maybe it was even going to work but Riddick had a feeling, a nagging suspicion in the back of his mind like a fucking burrowing beetle in his brain that this was all about to go to shit and then some. As they marched up and up a poorly-lit stairwell, up and out onto the flat roof with footfalls echoing loud on the steps, he knew it wasn’t the time to have doubts. Especially as he was in the fucking bizarre position of honestly believing Vaako was _not_ out to screw him over though fuck only knew how he’d come to that stunning conclusion.

"You're sure about this shit?" Riddick said, and shoulder-barged his way through the locked door at the top of the stairs. It came open more easily than anticipated and he stumbled on through. 

Vaako looked at him that way that told him he was being an ass without actually using so many words. It was a damn familiar look. "Of course I'm sure," he said, stepping out onto the rooftop with his knives drawn, boots crunching on gravel.

"And what makes you think he won't just have me killed on sight?"

Vaako sighed. "We've been over this," he said. "He's _not_ going to kill you. As soon as they realise you're alive, he'll have to fight you. You _know_ that."

Riddick guessed he _did_ know that. And he guessed over the years he'd spent so long getting chased the fuck around then getting caught just so he could escape again like it was some kind of twisted-ass party game that he couldn't really object to this; and he didn't _really_ object, he guessed, because he was going to go along with it, just felt like he should do it to piss Vaako off. It was pretty much his favourite pastime and it never really seemed to matter that Vaako knew it. 

The invasion was almost over, Vaako said, as they peered off the rooftop and out over the city, over burning buildings and troops marching civilians back to the ships. Now it was time to _really_ start. 

***

“This was a fucking majestically dumbass plan,” Riddick said. 

“I didn’t say it was without its pitfalls.”

“But you _did_ say it’d work.”

“I said it _should_ work.”

“Yeah. Now look where we are.”

Riddick heard footsteps in the hallway, the fine click-click of high heels, the faint sweep of a full-length dress against the smooth floors. He sighed, rubbed one hand over his head, the rasp of his palm on stubble just a fraction louder to his ears than the footsteps, just for a fraction of a second. 

“You said she was dead,” he said, before she was even in view because he didn’t need to see her to know exactly who it was. He knew the sound of her walk. They both knew the sound. 

Vaako shrugged, shoulders shifting against the wall he was leaning on, the back of the cell they’d been so unceremoniously tossed on into maybe a half hour earlier, much to their collective disdain. “I thought I saw her die,” he said. “Apparently, I was wrong.”

She introduced herself as Dame Krone and Riddick spat at her. Vaako didn’t look at her at all. When she apologised for her betrayal, it sounded like _I told you so_ more than anything else and it probably was so Riddick spat at her again. Vaako did at least manage to look amused at that, as Riddick’s saliva dripped off of the hem of her dress. 

“He’ll have to kill Riddick,” she told Vaako, as if this seemed perfectly reasonable to all concerned, and frankly Vaako looked like he’d expected it. Riddick guessed he had, too; there were times when the Necros were really damn predictable. “Perhaps he’ll set you free again.”

They both knew what she meant by that; without the Purification that had lengthened his life thus far, Vaako would age. Maybe Krone would set him free but even if he did it wasn’t really freedom, not for him, not in any way he wanted it, and besides it was a hell of a lot more likely that he’d keep Vaako this time, keep him alive, let him age, let him die there in years to come as a warning to all the others in his fleet who might consider mutiny. Riddick couldn’t help but think that wasn’t the way Vaako was meant to go out. There had to be more to come.

The cell was small, floor, ceiling, three walls all carved from stone like that was practical on a goddamn spaceship, solid bars in tight rows across the front, just enough room for them to stretch out side by side on the floor to sleep if they’d had any intention of sleeping that way. Once Dame fucking Krone had swept away in a cloud of her own fucking self-importance they’d settled back down in one corner again, silent, each leaning against a separate wall but close enough that Vaako’s legs crossed over Riddick’s thighs. They stayed close like they’d done for years, no discussion required, and put in a couple of hours of fitful sleep that Riddick was pretty sure they were going to need in the end.

Krone came in the morning, pulled up a seat outside the cell and watched like they were his very own private zoo as a lowly lackey pushed a tray of seared meat and two cups of water through a small flap at the bottom of the bars that looked like it’d been hastily and pretty shittily installed just for that purpose. Sadly, _pretty shittily_ for the Necros was still solid enough that they weren’t gonna be able to manipulate their way through it. Vaako completely stonewalled the asshole and ate, drank, and Riddick followed his lead without asking where the meat came from on a ship full of people who didn’t eat, or why Vaako didn’t think poison was likely. Maybe he just didn’t care either way, who the fuck knew. 

“Just like a common breeder,” Krone said as he stood to leave, like he’d seen enough. Vaako’s bitch ex had apparently warned him about the spitting because he stood well back, wary, as he watched the two of them. Vaako said nothing. Not even when the lackey shot them both with tranquilisers and when Riddick struggled to keep his feet, failed and fell down to his knees on the stone in the end, they dragged Vaako away. 

There’d’ve been no way to know how long he was gone even if Riddick hadn’t passed out once or twice from the tranqs; the cell had no windows, no strangely convenient clock that he’d’ve suspected pretty hard even if it’d had one, was out in space anyway so who the fuck knew if it was night or day or if that even mattered. It was maybe three hours, maybe four, maybe eight or a whole goddamn day before Riddick was really lucid again, albeit buckled the fuck up in leather straps against the wall, and a five-man squad of Necros brought Vaako back, two of them dragging him by the arms, the steel toe caps of his boots scraping loud against the floor, scoring a line on stone. They tossed him in; he landed with a groan on his knees. It was an odd sound, one Riddick had pretty much never heard him make, not even back in the fight pits. He guessed he was still half-drugged.

He’d been beaten, that much was clear when he looked at him. Riddick guessed Krone had done it or at least he’d had it done and watched, though that wasn’t exactly a tough leap to make. 

“Vaako.”

He looked at him, one eye swollen shut, lower lip split twice, bloody. Two fingers on his left hand were broken when he moved slowly across the small cell to unbuckle Riddick’s restraints, mouth twisted in a grimace. They’d fucked him up and all Riddick could do was tear his own goddamn shirt to tie around his broken fingers, use what water they’d got left to try to clean him up. It didn’t go a long way. He wasn’t all that clean when he’d finished.

The next day it happened all over again; Vaako was tossed back in later, missing one wisdom tooth and two fingernails, bruised, hair and shirt wet like they’d been dunking him in water for hours and they probably had been. Riddick knew what that was like. The same the _next_ day, the little toe of one foot lopped off and roughly cauterised, shoulder out of joint that Riddick had to pop back in when Vaako finally came to just long enough to untie him from the fucking wall. He barely flinched as Riddick manipulated the joint and he had a pretty fucking clear notion that fact didn’t bode well. They didn’t speak about it. They said nothing at all, just sat close together in the corner and tried to rest. 

Burns on his chest the next day. Vaako’s ex still had the soldering gun she’d used to do it in her hand when they brought him back in, laughed as she watched him fumble semi-conscious for Riddick’s restraints and fall short, fall unconscious. Riddick was still tied up the next morning when they took Vaako again, still tied up when they tossed him back in, nose broken and bleeding onto the floor, onto his shirt, staining a stain from a previous day. He was a bloody fucking mess. If Krone and his lady friend kept this up, Vaako wouldn’t last five days and Riddick knew that, _knew_ that, beyond a shadow of a doubt. They were probably getting off on all the pain he felt that they couldn’t, and then Krone would fight Riddick once he was half-starved and Vaako was dead. He _had_ to fight him, to save face, had to fight him under the law, but there was no weird-ass Necro rule that said he had to fight fair. 

The next day, while the lights were out at night or just some random time that was probably chosen to fuck with them both, Vaako spat out a piece of metal onto the floor, like a razorblade that’d cut his tongue till blood leaked out from the corners of his mouth and pooled on the stone floor. He pushed it inch by excruciating inch to Riddick’s hands as he drifted in and out, cutting at his fingers till Riddick had it, then passed the fuck out again with one last look that Riddick was pretty damn hard pressed to decipher – either _kill me now_ or _get me the hell out of here_ and it seemed there was a pretty fine line between the meaning of the two. For a couple of minutes after, Riddick wasn’t totally sure which he was going to do. 

He cut through his restraints in what passed for night. In the morning, when the guards came, he took them both out with the razorblade and then turned to Vaako still passed out there face-down on the floor. 

He could’ve left him. He could’ve tried to find Krone, followed the line in the stone left by Vaako’s boots, killed him and his bitch wife with the same fucking razorblade and had done with it, if he ever got that far. He could’ve said a hearty fuck you and run for the hills before anyone even knew he was gone. He hefted Vaako up instead and he stepped out through the open cell door. Twenty minutes later they were strapped into a crappy skiff headed out of there as fast as it’d carry them, Vaako buckled tight into the seat beside him. He took him with him. It seemed like the thing to do, under the circumstances.

“Riddick,” Vaako said, his voice thick, barely recognisable. 

“Save it,” Riddick answered. He had no idea if he’d been about to say _sorry_ or _thanks_ or any fucking thing, _what the fuck did you do that for?_ or _well, there goes the plan_. He didn’t want to hear it. They needed to be gone. 

He should’ve left without the Necro son of a bitch but somewhere along the line he guessed he’d gotten used to him. 

***

They didn’t stop for three days. 

Riddick got them out of the system then set a course for the next one over, set the autopilot and spent two hours cleaning Vaako up, splinting his fingers, realigning his broken nose, disinfecting and dressing wounds till the pared-down on-board med kit apparently standard on a Necro jump ship was pretty seriously depleted. Vaako barely came to the whole damn time, just in fits and bursts and even then he made no fucking sense. 

When they got to Sierra 5, a mountainous rock, a former mining colony with its major city built right inside the damn hills, they took on fuel and supplies and shot off again just as soon as they could. He pumped Vaako full of antibiotics just in case, hooked up a drip and a catheter as he dredged up every ounce of weird-ass medical training he’d ever had or seen or overheard, and they moved on again. They still needed distance; they still weren’t safe. 

It rained day and night on Centauri 2, where they actually stopped for a couple of weeks, where Vaako came to long enough to eat and drink, to get the catheter out with a look of genuine _what the fuck_ , and he managed to stumble into the bathroom to piss with Riddick there to lean on like that was normal. Riddick made him eat some more when he woke again a couple of hours later, kept him awake airing and redressing every wound he had, telling him dumbass stories about the places he’d been like either of them gave a damn about where he’d been and what he’d done. His bruised eye had gone down enough for him to open it just a fraction and look at Riddick like he’d lost his mind as he talked, so that was progress. 

They still had their excellent mob-issue fake ID but cash started to run low again pretty fast once they started spending instead of stealing. Med supplies were pricey, even worse than food and clothes and even they were nearly more than their budget. Some nights he worked security outside a club in the pouring fucking Centauri rain just so they’d have what they needed, came back in in the early hours worn the fuck out and pissed off to find Vaako changing dressings yet again. 

“Is there a reason you’ve not given me painkillers?” Vaako asked, one night as Riddick poked and prodded at his wounds, one thumb exploring the bruised orbit of his eye. 

“Knew a guy got hooked on morphine,” he replied, simply. 

“And you thought I’d go the same way?”

“Didn’t want to take the chance.” 

Vaako didn’t answer that, just took a swig of cheap vodka and winced at the taste. Riddick guessed it was true; morphine was pricey but he could’ve gotten his hands on some. He hadn’t wanted to. He’d seen what that did to guys, though he was pretty damn clear on the fact that Vaako wasn’t Johns.

It was a month after the escape that Vaako was finally out of bed more than he was in it. He mooched around the room reading and stretching and exercising more and more every day; he never stopped when Riddick got in and so he watched him move, noted the parts that still bothered him so he could work on them with some almost-too-hard massage that made Vaako curse under his breath, saw those parts lessen in number day by day. Then Riddick handed him his blades one rainy evening, the new set he’d had made that cost pretty much everything they had left, that would fit there at the small of Vaako’s back just like the old ones did before. 

Vaako smiled darkly and Riddick knew he knew what that meant. They left the room, Riddick toting their shit in a crappy old holdall, and hit the roughest bar Riddick knew. After a couple of drinks they picked a fight with the meanest-looking guys around and didn’t stop till all five of them were lying dead on the floor; Vaako cleaned off his blades and then sheathed them at his back, pulled on his long coat and smiled at him, showing teeth. Vaako was fine. Vaako was back. Now they could get the hell out of there, stopping just long enough to rob the bar of two bottles of better vodka and whatever currency they’d got stashed there behind the counter, though Riddick still wasn’t hot on stealing, which was pretty damn weird considering everything else he’d done in life. 

They took a ship – not theirs, they’d sold the Necro skiff as soon as they’d arrived there on Centauri – and left the planet. A week of crappy-ass MREs later, they landed on Lazarus 4; they stepped into a room in the same shitty boarding house they’d stayed in there before, not the same room but just a floor up and a couple of doors down, so similar it might as well have been the same one they’d lived those eight months in, and Vaako sighed heavily. 

“Home sweet home,” Riddick said, ditching the holdall on a seat by the window. He knew what Vaako was thinking, though; this was _not_ his home, not even close to it, not even Riddick’s home though even Furya wasn’t exactly his home these days. Fuck, he’d’ve felt more homely in any of a dozen slams. Sometimes it seemed like his whole life was one long escape.

Vaako changed the dressing on his last, most stubborn wound, where his toe had been and Riddick was pretty impressed that the loss of it hadn’t affected his balance, then stretched out in bed without a word. Riddick followed suit, turned off the lights, took off his goggles, ditched them on the floor. 

“I want to kill him,” Vaako said, in the dark as Riddick watched him. He probably knew he was being watched. He always seemed to know somehow.

Riddick spread one hand over Vaako’s chest, fingers tracing the still-fresh burn scars there, pressing in till it had to hurt though Vaako didn’t flinch. 

“I want to kill _her_ ,” he said. 

Neither one asked who the other meant because there was just no goddamn need. Vaako kissed him instead, hot and hard, straddled his thighs and scraped his teeth at Riddick’s jaw, but for once in his life Riddick wasn’t spoiling for a fight, fuck knew why but he wasn’t. He ran his hands up over Vaako’s clothed thighs instead, settled them just underneath the hem of his tank top, thumbs rubbing against warm skin. Vaako slapped him, hard, did it again just to get a reaction, but all Riddick did was dump him down onto his back and follow over, settle on top between Vaako’s thighs, propped up on his hands, then came down close on his forearms. He rested his forehead down on Vaako’s collarbone for a moment then slipped his mouth to the place where his pulse beat in his neck and wondered idly what would happen if he bit down, filled his mouth and half the bed and half the room with Vaako’s blood. And he meant to move away except then Vaako’s arms went around his waist and held him there, anchored solidly against him. 

When a couple of minutes had ticked by and Riddick pulled back just far enough to look at him, Vaako looked tired and pissed, just a kind of low-grade pissed under the weariness that Riddick shook his head at. Neither of them really felt like sex or like fighting, Riddick guessed, were just getting there out of habit so he shifted off, shifted away, Vaako letting him go till he’d stretched out next to him on one side and slung an arm over Vaako’s waist, close. 

“Go to sleep,” Riddick said against his shoulder. “We’ll figure out what the fuck we’re gonna do in the morning.” 

Vaako huffed but he didn’t protest; one hand circled Riddick’s wrist and they slept. It wasn’t till the morning that they fucked again, for the first time in a month, more, since before the attack and the capture and escape. Vaako slicked Riddick’s cock and rode him till he came and then Riddick did the same, rubbed the head of Vaako’s cock against his asshole before he sat back, taking him in, quick and deep and hard. Afterwards he left the bed and headed into the bathroom, turned on the shower and left the light off and looked back through into the bedroom.

“Are you coming?” he asked. “I’m not gonna wait all day.”

Vaako snorted shortly but he padded along naked into the bathroom like it’d been his idea all along. Riddick closed the door and then the little windowless room was pitch black except the faint line of light shining in under the door, spilling no more than an inch on the cracked tiles. Goggles discarded on the counter, Riddick ushered Vaako into the shower in the dark and Vaako went, let himself be guided, let Riddick get in close and nip at his jaw, his collarbones, let him turn him around to face the wall, leaning on his hands against the tiles as Riddick went down on his knees, thumbs pressed tight to the line of his spine all the way down. Vaako chuckled lowly as Riddick spread his cheeks and let his tongue rasp over his asshole, teasing. Riddick knew every inch of him, from his broken nose to the scar at one hip, from the nub of missing toe to the smooth stretch of perineum that ran behind his balls. He knew _all_ of him. 

Vaako was hard again when he turned, cock catching Riddick in the face and they both snickered briefly, the sound echoing in the dark until Riddick took him in his mouth, one hand snaking back to shove his fingers into him. Vaako rested his head back against the tiles, breathing hard. Riddick sucked him till he came then spat into the drain and Vaako could tell what he was doing, shaking his head. 

Riddick watched him then from his knees on the floor, thumbs tracing the lines of his hipbones. The dressing at his foot was getting soaked and he knew every last scar on him, maybe better than he knew his own, better than he knew anyone else’s, even the ones his blades had left on others. Sometimes he wondered why he hadn’t killed him; the rest of the time he knew why. Vaako was just enough like him to keep things interesting, just different enough to make him want to wrap his hands around his neck and squeeze. 

“Fuck,” he said, as he came back up slowly to his feet. He stepped in close, Vaako’s hands going to scratch small, hard circles at the small of his back. “I’m through running. Let’s kill that son of a bitch.”

Vaako smiled in the dark; he had to know Riddick could see him when he did it. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said. 

***

It was another shitty plan, Riddick thought. But he went along with it anyway. It wasn’t like he had a better plan of his own.

Back on Centauri 2, they let themselves be taken to the assembly hall after the invasion, disguised though pretty fucking surprised those disguises really worked. Then, as Krone began his little speech of kill-or-convert that the previous lord marshal – the one Riddick had killed, at least – had done at least ten times better, the two of them stepped out of the crowd, put down two Necro guards with their usual efficiency and walked out onto the floor. 

“You again,” Krone said. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time?” Riddick tossed a knife to the floor at Krone’s feet just like he’d been told to; Krone’s eyes narrowed. “A challenge?”

“Right here, right now,” Riddick said. Loudly. Loud enough for every Necromonger in the hall to hear and for Krone to understand he couldn’t weasel his way out of it. There’d be no starving him in a cage till he thought he could kill him this time. Kill or be killed, he had to fight.

“Very well,” Krone said, his jaw tight. He swirled away, had his traitor wife unclasp his cape and fold it in her arms for safekeeping. She didn’t look pleased, though whether that was at the prospect of her husband’s untimely death or the fact she was pretty much just being used as a coat stand, Riddick didn’t like to venture. “Shall we begin?”

“One second.” Riddick turned to Vaako, dropped his voice. “You sure about this?”

Vaako gave him a thoroughly sardonic smile. “No,” he said. “That’s why I suggested it. That’s why we’ve planned it for the past four days. That’s why we’re here. Because I’m _not sure_.”

Riddick put up his hands in concession. Then he turned, quickly, caught the nearest Necro by the arm and wrenched him down to the ground with it. Vaako took the guy’s knife and they both went down on their knees. Riddick’s hand closed over Vaako’s on the hilt and they shoved the knife up under the guy’s chin together. Then they both looked up at Krone over the bleeding body. 

“Do you know what you’ve just done, Riddick?” Krone asked, his voice tight, high, a little shrill, _scared_ , which wasn’t exactly cool among the Necros. Many of whom were starting to look uneasy as they watched and listened.

“Yeah, I know,” Riddick said, and he _did_ know. So did all the other Necros in the hall. Soon they’d _all_ know. He came back up to his feet, held out one hand to Vaako who clasped Riddick’s forearm and came up too, right beside him. “Now you fight _him_ instead of me.”

Vaako took the soldier’s axe. Riddick pulled the knife from under the guy’s chin with a wet, sickly noise that seemed to turn a few of the natives’ stomachs, and he handed that to him, too. Better not to go in under-armed, he always thought. 

It was over quickly, surprisingly so though Riddick guessed he was the only guy in the hall who’d’ve bet on the angry guy in the dirty fatigues over the lord marshal in all his pretty armour. However, Lord Marshal Krone lacked practical fighting experience that Vaako didn’t in any way, Riddick guessed that was why the guy had tried to shoot at him back on that godforsaken fucking rock, and ten minutes saw his fucking waffle iron head lopped straight off his shoulders, rolling bloody to the floor. Vaako threw the axe to the ground beside the head and came down heavy on his knees, buried the knife in Krone’s chest for good measure like the decapitation wasn’t enough. The natives should’ve known better than to take this as a good sign when he rose and all the Necros knelt before him; of course, they had no way to know like Riddick did that Vaako was pretty fucking far from being their saviour. Maybe he didn’t look like a Necro right then and his dark turtleneck covered the telltale scars at his neck, but he wouldn’t let them go. There was no way he’d do it. 

“Thank the lord,” said one of the women, nearby, too loud. 

Riddick turned. “Don’t get _too_ thankful,” he told her, sharp. 

“Take them,” Vaako said, looking at her, as if to prove his point. And so the Necro soldiers took the prisoners, woman and all. They’d be Purified, Riddick knew that, parts of their minds left over but they’d be converts, they’d be Necromongers, or they’d be put to death instead, the kids fast-matured in weird-ass chambers then Purified too. Sometimes there were more kids left alive after invasions than adults, Vaako had told him once, and the Necros didn’t mind that; sometimes the kids made the best converts. Riddick didn’t tell him that sounded suspiciously like breeding.

Vaako surveyed the scene, surveyed Krone’s headless body on the ground then stepped on over it, guards that had just a second ago been Krone’s just a few steps behind him. They all knew Vaako’s face and Riddick had to admit they made the transition from one lord marshal to the next pretty damn seamlessly because some of them had been around since before Riddick and during. Vaako was heading for the doors out into the street, the long avenue beyond it that led to the foot of the Necromonger obelisk and then to the ship where the lord marshal and his court all spent their days. He was going home, Riddick guessed.

He stopped by Riddick, just a few feet away, turned his head but not his body as he looked at him, every inch the fucking Necromonger even in his stained human clothes. “Are you coming?” he asked, and Riddick looked at him, closely. He almost said no. He almost told him they’d done what they’d set out to do three years earlier, nearly four, so long and thanks for all the fish. Then he rubbed one hand over his head, over the stubble that was overdue a shave, and he nodded. 

“Yeah,” he said, though he guessed he knew better. To hell with caution, though; he’d never been a cautious guy. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

He went to Vaako’s side, and they left together. 

***

“You could take me back,” Krone’s widow said, her tone reasonable though the sentiment pretty clearly wasn’t. Clear to everyone but her, that was. 

“And why would I do that?” Vaako asked. 

“I was your wife,” she said. “Wasn’t I a good wife? I could be again.”

Riddick wasn’t in the room, couldn’t see the two of them, but he could pretty much conjure the conversation in his mind as he leaned there casually against the wall outside the lord marshal’s chambers. She’d been trying to worm her way back into her ex-husband’s affections for three days, the artifice of it pretty dazzling, since they’d nuked what was left of Centauri 2 and headed back out into space. She was pretty damn tenacious, Riddick had to admit, had bigger balls than half the guys in the fleet, than the vast majority of guys he’d ever met when it came down to it. It was a crying shame he still wanted to decorate the throne room with her corpse. 

“There’s someone else,” Vaako said. He could hear the sarcastic smile in his voice, could pretty much see it. “You might’ve met him.” 

He heard the swish of her long dress against the floor. He imagined she’d stepped up closer, her hands hovering at his chest. “We can solve that problem.”

“Our faith does _not_ allow for divorce.”

“He’s not of our faith, Vaako.”

“But _I_ am.”

She sighed. “Then we kill him, husband,” she said. “We push the knife in together as we did when you took me from my _first_ husband, and we rule the way we planned to rule for all those years.”

Vaako chuckled; Riddick finally stepped into the room. To her credit, she just looked faintly disgruntled by his presence, not like she’d been plotting his death at all.

“You better not be thinking about bumping me off so soon after the wedding, honey,” Riddick said, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. “At least give it till the honeymoon’s over.”

Vaako snorted. Dame Krone, on the other hand, did _not_ look amused. She left quickly, striding out past Riddick through the open doorway and away down the corridor till she was out of sight, her heels clicking on the floor long after. He had to hand it to her – the lady was absolutely fearless. Maybe she’d be more fun to have around dead than alive.

He’d barely seen Vaako since they’d launched off of Centauri. It wasn’t like he’d been mooning around like some goddamn love-struck teen because he’d had plenty to do with free run of the ship in new clothes that weren’t stained with who the fuck knew how many people’s blood, food to eat though only he and Vaako actually ate it, a bed to sleep in that he was pretty sure the same one he’d had four years before and that made sense because it wasn’t like Krone had slept. But fuck, it was the longest he’d been alone in _years_ and far from being able to enjoy it he was in a fucking cage that he’d let himself get put in; the glimpses and glances in corridors as Lord Marshal Vaako swept by pissed Riddick off, made him listen in on conversations, made him take note of fleeting expressions on the commanders’ faces, made him do all the things he’d failed to do back when he’d been made lord marshal because hell if he was going to let Vaako screw things up the way he had. There was still something else Vaako had to do for him. 

So, he’d learned the ship systematically, each level, each corridor, key locations and routes to launch bays and everything he’d need if it all went south again. He’d seen every inch of the ship, seen jump ships, skiffs, taken brief trips onto troop vessels and landing ships, seen every inch of those too. He’d been with Necros all the livelong day, figured the place out, but somehow it was still really fucking strange to see Vaako in armour again, and so right then he stepped forward, strode in quick and close and started to strip him out of it. 

He was pissed at the whole damn situation and it was a bad idea because of it except it didn’t feel that way while he unpinned the armour section by section, pulled Vaako about roughly, dumping it onto the floor in pieces that he’d have to figure the fuck out himself in the morning because Riddick sure as hell wasn’t helping him with it. Vaako let him do it, didn’t seem to give a damn when straps tore and hidden buttons skittered across the floor, didn’t care until all the armour was gone and he was left there in the black suit he wore underneath, that weird-ass animal pattern all over it that Riddick was sure was meant to mean something sensible, maybe did if you were a Necromonger. _Then_ he cared, moved sharply, caught Riddick under his chin with his forearm and sent him sprawling on his back on the hard floor. He was over him in a second, that same forearm barred over Riddick’s throat. 

It had been like that when he’d explained the plan and Riddick had listened because what the fuck else was he going to do while he lay there? Vaako had told him more about Necro society in a few short sentences than he was pretty sure he’d known before in months, how the law was strict and simple on one point and that point was partnership, what passed for marriage. No need for prejudice because that wasn’t in their faith, Vaako could choose whoever he chose as a partner, a mate, as a legal consort, husband if they wanted to call it that. Then, in Necromonger law, all their rights and responsibilities would be merged and shared. Vaako could claim the fight with Krone. Riddick would be legally one of their own.

Their clothes didn’t come off the whole way, but they didn’t need to. Riddick sat up; Vaako straddled his thighs; they pulled down at each other’s pants as they sat there, as they shifted so Riddick was leaning back against the wall, jerked each other off with Vaako’s mouth bent to the crook of Riddick’s neck, his breath hot. It wasn’t gentle, was _never_ gentle, callused hands rough on hot skin, hips shifting, muscles tense. 

Vaako had told him all Necromonger marriages, partnerships, were political or sexual in nature. When Riddick snickered and asked him which he thought theirs would be, he’d laughed and said _both_. It _was_ both. They finished each other off quickly, messy, hot, breathless. They used Riddick’s shirt to clean themselves off, tossed it aside as Vaako stood and held out his hand to help him back up, too. 

“So,” Vaako said, still clasping Riddick’s arm, too close, closer than he’d been in days. “Furya.”

Riddick nodded. “Furya,” he said. It was about time. “You gonna send some other traitor son of a bitch to take me there this time?”

“We changed course two hours ago.”

“The whole fleet?”

“The whole fleet.”

“How long?”

“Six months. Perhaps a year.”

Six months, a year, then it’d be over. Six months on the Necro flagship, playing along as Vaako’s consort. He could do that, he thought. After all, the son of a bitch was finally keeping his promise. 

***

Six months turned out to be a pretty fucking long time. Maybe not to the Necros, because what did a year or two or ten mean when they didn’t age? But it was fucking forever to him.

He guessed he could’ve asked to be put into some kind of cryosleep for the trip but that kinda felt like cheating somehow, especially after more details of the implications of his special arrangement with Vaako started to become clear. They’d done it so Vaako could be the one to kill Krone, he got that part, but Riddick realised like a total dumbass he’d zoned out when Vaako had gone into the particulars of the arrangement back down on the planet. Turned out they’d be considered the same entity under Necro law; according to the faith they were now pretty much interchangeable. Any order Riddick felt like giving would be like hearing it from Vaako because under the law he pretty much _was_ Vaako. Of course, that also meant any shitty transgressions on Riddick’s part would come down hard on Vaako because Vaako _was_ Riddick. He guessed at least now he understood why Vaako’s ex had just used his name like she hadn’t had one of her own; in a way, she hadn’t.

The first couple of weeks he wasn’t asked to contribute in any way and yeah, okay, so he didn’t _want_ to contribute, but it was pretty fucking maddening to be dicking around all day like an ass. He started spending time with the engineers, getting to know how all the Necro tech shit actually worked, crawling in ducts to see how the pieces fit together once he’d decided Vaako didn’t need his help, he’d leave the jackassery of politics to him for a while. Then he got sick of that, predictably, and by the third week he was trailing Vaako around the ship as he worked, silently, covertly, finding out what a lord marshal actually did because he sure as shit hadn’t done it in his own brief tenure. Turned out it was more complicated than he’d realised, a veritable fucking minefield that Vaako skipped through gaily on a daily basis, at least as gaily as Vaako could ever manage. He’d never exactly been all smiles and laughter and getting home hadn’t changed that. 

“You’re not gonna ask me to work?” Riddick asked one night, in bed, what passed for night on a ship of sleepless minions where the lights weren’t designed to dim. Luckily, the lord marshal’s chambers still had that little piece of additional functionality left over from Riddick’s days in charge, even if ‘night’ was a pretty damn arbitrary concept there. 

Vaako turned off the tablet he’d been working on and set it down on the floor by the bed. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to ask you to work.”

“You’re not gonna ask me to be your first commander?”

Vaako propped his head up on one hand as he eyed him carefully. “No, I’m not,” he said. 

“You’re not gonna ask me to oversee Purification?”

Vaako pursed his lips. “No. I’m _definitely_ not going to ask you to do that.”

“You’re not even gonna ask me to help train the new troops?”

Vaako raised his brows. “Oh,” he said, as it clicked into place. “So _that’s_ what you want.” He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either. Riddick took that as his blessing.

He started in the morning; it was something to do, at least, while space passed by and Vaako argued bullshit policy with his commanders up in operations. He went down to the training room, more of a pretty damn vast hall than just a room when it came down to it, loud with the stomping of boots and the clash of blades. Necros used guns, sure, but it seemed all the soldiers had more than a cursory training with a variety other weapons, melee weapons, swords and knives and axes, some hand-to-hand to round it all off like somehow guns were lesser or maybe just fucking passé. _This_ he could get involved in, though he guessed he’d never really tried to train anyone in his whole life thus far. Still, he was pretty sure that didn’t matter when he was the best goddamn fighter on the ship. He’d figure it out.

It was remarkable restraint, he thought, that kept him from killing the drill sergeant or whatever the hell the Necros called them. He ordered the guy to stand down, the first order he’d given with his really fucking weird new power by proxy, and the guy didn’t back off like he was expected to. Maybe that should’ve been the first sign. The sword Riddick embedded in his arm wouldn’t kill him, might not even have hurt if he’d been Purified like all the rest and Riddick guessed he was, but that didn’t stop him bleeding out all over the floor till Riddick barked at them to take him away. And then they started. He had his own company.

Turned out he was a pretty damn good teacher. Yeah, he broke bones and split skin to get his point across but the class of fifty newbies he’d taken on came on in leaps and bounds with him. At the end of each day for a month he fought one of them one-on-one and had the others gather round to watch in a loose sort of circle. They started to land the occasional punch, came closer with their blades, but he’d always be faster, better, not just because he could feel and they couldn’t. Maybe they even started to respect him because of what he did for them, he thought, which was the weirdest damn thing. He wasn’t used to being valued.

Then the drill sergeant of the next company came over and challenged him, not quite friendly but seeming kinda intrigued. Riddick put him down without ceremony, in the circle, this guy with more field experience than Riddick had years; he held out his hand when they were done and pulled him back up to his feet. 

“Well fought,” the sergeant said. 

“Yeah,” Riddick agreed. “Well fought.” It’d been a rush and what the hell, he liked rushes. They were pretty hard to get on a ship full of dull-ass Necros.

There’d been more eyes watching then than he’d realised and over the next few days there was a whole damn queue that formed to try him there in the training hall. Soldiers first, then captains, commanders, harder fights, more bruises that Vaako’s fingers pushed at in the night, that his mouth pressed to harder than was comfortable but really, fuck comfortable. He licked at a cut at Riddick’s jaw; when he kissed him it was filled with the warm, familiar tang of copper. 

And then, three months in, more fights than Riddick had bothered to count, the lord marshal came to see. 

“How about we give _you_ a try, Vaako?” Riddick called across the hall, and Vaako laughed, loudly, the sound bouncing eerily off the high walls in the room that’d turned deathly silent the moment he’d stepped inside. He unclipped his cape from his shoulders, let it drop heavy to the floor at his feet, then he pulled off his gloves and dropped those; Riddick could see what he was doing, knew that meant _challenge accepted_ and stood by the watch as section after section of his Necro armour came away and got discarded on the floor till all that was left was his high-necked black jumpsuit and his boots. He stretched, slowly, his eyes on Riddick and the troops’ eyes on him. He pulled two blades from the small of his back, three inches of steel that went between his first and second knuckles and stuck out sharp when he balled his hands into fists. Riddick grinned. He pulled his knives. 

They stepped together. All eyes were on them. Then they moved. 

It wasn’t over quickly. They knew each other too well for that, knew each other’s moves and weaknesses, knew when to push in and when to withdraw, dance away. Riddick roared as a blade nicked his shoulder; Vaako spat blood onto the floor from a split in his lip from the back of Riddick’s hand. They were well matched, fuelled by adrenaline that the troops didn’t feel, twisting and turning, elbows, knees, flashing blades that skittered along the stone floors now and then till one or the other retrieved them and then Riddick held Vaako’s blades in between his knuckles, Vaako with Riddick’s set curved around his fists. 

They wound up on the floor in the end, breathing heavy, amused, Riddick on top with one blade to Vaako’s throat. A thin line of blood stood out over the collar of his suit. 

“We done?” Riddick said. 

Vaako tapped a blade at the inside of Riddick’s thigh, over the femoral artery; one slice and he’d bleed out all over the floor, all over Vaako. “We’re done,” he confirmed, with a dark little smile. 

They came back to their feet, bruised and bloody; Riddick had gotten the distinct impression Necros didn’t applaud but if it’d been in them they’d’ve done it then. The whole damn hall couldn’t help but be impressed, even Dame Krone there at the back with disapproval all over her face as she dug her nails into he palms. And Riddick had to admit, as they left the hall together, that it’d been a hell of a play on Vaako’s part: all of the Necros knew what they’d have to get past if they wanted the fleet for themselves. They’d have to go through Vaako _and_ through Riddick. 

“Tell me you did that ‘cause you wanted to, not for the politics,” Riddick said, later, in the dark as he moved in him, still feeling the ache in his muscles from the fight but it felt good, felt familiar. 

“I did it because _you_ wanted to,” Vaako said over his shoulder, up on his knees. He pushed back hard, Riddick’s fingers finding the scars at his neck. “ _And_ for the politics.”

Riddick guessed he could live with that. 

***

“Why don’t you train women?” Riddick asked, maybe a week or so after his class had moved on. 

Vaako shrugged, taking a bite of something that might’ve been chicken and might not’ve been. Riddick hadn’t seen an animal in the whole time he’d been on board, not anywhere on the ship, wouldn’t’ve been surprised if he’d found out everything they ate was Soylent fucking Green but at least Vaako had stopped bitching about it. 

“Tradition,” he said. 

Riddick decided he’d live dangerously and took a bite of the food on his own plate. “It’s not like they’re having kids.” Which was totally true because hell, Purification sterilised each and every Necro.

“No, it’s not.”

“Then why the tradition?”

Vaako looked at him across the table as he sat there in his armour, ready for the day like chicken and some kind of oddly textured porridge wasn’t an unusual breakfast to say the least. “Do you care or do you just want me to tell you _there’s no real reason, do whatever you like_?”

“Why don’t you decide.”

Vaako tilted his head as he studied him over his plate. He clearly knew where this was leading but for a second Riddick thought he might actually start in on some dull-ass story about how a thousand years ago blah blah fucking blah. Sometimes he did. Sometimes Riddick even listened, at least for a while, even though he knew he only ever did it to piss him off. 

“There’s no real reason,” Vaako said in the end, digging his fork into porridge. “Do whatever you like.”

So he did. The next planet they took, Riddick picked out twenty women after they were through with Purification and he got them a room for all their shit, uniforms that fit, and marched them out into the training hall. The drill sergeants all pretty fucking clearly thought he was nuts but he was used to that, expected it. What he didn’t expect was that Dame Krone came in to see. 

The first three days, all she did was watch. She stood the whole first day for hours on end, off to the side of the hall in her ridiculous long dress, arms crossed under her bust, eyes sharp and often on him. The second day, Riddick got her a chair because he knew it’d piss her off, took it over himself and stared her down till she sat with a scowl. The third day, she brought he own damn chair and two other women too, one of whom Riddick was pretty sure he’d had back when he’d been lord marshal but that seemed like forever ago, like a totally different life. 

“I want to train with them,” she said, on the morning of the fourth day. 

Riddick looked her up and down, appraising, not sure for a second how he was going to react to what wasn’t quite a request but couldn’t be an order. Then he gestured at her dress. “Not in that,” he said. “Wear something practical.”

She wasn’t his best student right off the bat, not even close. She turned up next in a skin-tight catsuit and high-heeled boots; he didn’t tell her not to wear them once she’d been knocked right down off them the first ten, fifteen times, told her _if you’re gonna wear those, learn to fucking balance_ instead. So she did, walking beams hundreds of feet above the engine core like a fucking lunatic, sink or swim, all or nothing like that was just in her nature somehow. He could appreciate that, in a way. 

After that, she got better. She wasn’t the tallest or the strongest but she’d got a kind of bloody-minded tenacity that meant she never quit, just kept on getting up till he had to tell her to stop, tell her again, physically restrain her before she did it _again_. Her hair started to get in the way, came loose as she fought, opponents dragging her down with it so she shaved it all off; he had to admire that about her because he knew as long as she was Purified it’d never grow back. And he knew, _knew_ he was gonna regret it, but he took her aside after the second week she’d spent getting her ass handed to her, after the second week that he’d let it happen. 

“That shit you’re doing is _not_ working for you,” he told her. “You’re not big. You’re not strong. You never will be so don’t fuck it up by trying.”

She scowled, that frequent scowl that was so venomous it was a fucking art form. “You have a suggestion, then?”

“I got five,” he said. “Be quicker. Be lighter on your feet. Be smarter. Work on flexibility and fucking listen to what I tell you.”

She smiled, sickly-sweet, reached up and patted his cheek with one bruised hand. “You’re sweet,” she said, like she’d’ve liked to kill him right then and there, and she turned and walked away. But she did exactly what he’d told her. She got better. She got better and better. 

“You’re training my ex-wife,” Vaako said, conversational, as conversational as he could get as he straddled Riddick’s hips. He wrapped his hand around Riddick’s cock and sat back, sank down, shifted his hips and made Riddick grip at his thighs damn near involuntarily. 

“You want me to quit?” he asked. 

Vaako planted both hands on Riddick’s chest and leant down over him, pinning him there, heavy. Would you, if I asked?”

“No.”

“She tortured me.”

“And here I thought you were wearing your big boy pants.”

Vaako snorted. “Then I’m not asking,” he said, and Riddick was perversely glad he didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure what he’d’ve done if he had; maybe he’d’ve just blithely kept on training her but maybe he’d’ve snapped her neck and ended it that way instead. He didn't think about what it meant that Vaako hadn't asked him to stop, after everything she'd done. He didn't tell him he'd not forgotten, just ran his palms over the burn scars at his chest instead.

She got better. She got better really fucking quickly once Riddick started keeping her back after class, once all the rest had filed out for some other kind of newbie training about which he gave not two fucks and that she, of course, had no part in. They stayed there in the training hall and he taught her how to move, found she learned quickly if acerbically because she couldn’t turn that mouth of hers off no matter how hard he tried to make her. When he handed her a pair of long, needle-thin swords, she had no clue what to do with them but she _learned_ , as the others picked up axes and swords too heavy for them. She learned. 

On the final day, she killed her opponent with one of her slim little swords that they’d been making fun of for weeks. Riddick felt a strange sense of accomplishment, a veneer over the part of him that wanted to beat her down and keep going till his knuckles bled and he was wrist-deep in her head. So as she left the room he caught her arm; she turned and struck him flush across the face, the ring on her finger fetching blood. He caught her wrist, squeezed it hard so she couldn’t do it again. 

“You don’t need to be his wife to be powerful,” he told her. “You think about that, then you come see me again.”

She bit his wrist to make him let her go; she stalked away and he laughed after her, the sound echoing oddly down the corridor. He couldn’t help but think he’d created a monster but hell, they were all monsters there, from the lowliest of foot soldiers to Riddick and Vaako up at the top of the food chair; maybe she’d be one of the useful ones. 

And if not, he guessed he could always kill her. 

***

The invasion was fucking weird. Riddick had been on the other side of the fight more than he’d been through it with the Necros and he’d never been on the ground with them before, definitely not in that damn restrictive armour with a company of his own troops at his back. They were all women. He’d never had any trouble with the idea that females could be just as deadly as males, after all, considering some of the women he’d known, considering Carolyn Frye who’d’ve ejected her passengers into space to save herself, considering Dahl and then Jack, Kyra, who the fuck ever she’d turned out to be in the end. It was just such a waste not to train them, get them out there with the guys. He knew they’d do well, and they did. 

They were the ones who brought the leaders out of hiding, who marched them under guard into the parliament building and awaited Vaako’s arrival. Dame Krone – though she’d dropped the _Dame_ as was apparently her right now her husband was dead – was right there at his right hand, somehow regal in her armour. He should’ve killed her right then and there and maybe Vaako would’ve preferred it that way, maybe _he_ would’ve preferred it that way, but he thought maybe she could be an ally where they had none; he’d seen the way some of the commanders looked at Vaako, looked at him. He just needed to play his cards right. 

“You want me to do _what_?” Vaako asked, after, back up on the ship. He looked irked. Then again, irked was pretty much his default position. 

Riddick shrugged. “You’re telling me you’ve not had worse ideas?”

That was the point where he knew he’d won, because Vaako had had _so_ many worse ideas and they both knew it; he might’ve been grudging about admitting it but that made it no less true. He huffed out a breath. 

“So, that’s settled.”

“That’s settled,” Vaako confirmed, his expression a mix of disgruntled and impressed. Sometimes he forgot what Vaako was, forgot that fundamentally he still thought Riddick was some kind of fucking animal and Riddick was sometimes pretty sure he was right. But that day, he'd gone ahead and had an idea so massively shitty and conversely fucking genius that it rivalled Vaako's worst.

Riddick walked into the operations room the following morning with Dame Krone, _just Krone_ , at his side. She was armoured, armed, her head starkly stubbled and eyes rimmed in burnt-on black. 

“Commander Krone,” Vaako said. “Welcome.” She joined them at the table.

The lady fit right in, that much was plain to see. Then again, she’d’ve fit right in wearing one of her plethora of impractical dresses and she demonstrated that the next day, gave another commander a wonderfully withering glare as he stood on the hem and then returned to business. They’d keep her close, see whether that worked any better than shutting her out completely, though he could tell Vaako thought it was a fucking monumentally bad idea from the start. Maybe he was right. Maybe that was just the torture and betrayal speaking. 

She caught Riddick’s arm as he turned to leave ops on day four, bored out of his mind by the politics of the room, and she stepped in close. 

“Where does he go at night while you’re sleeping?” she asked, murmured by his ear with just a glance across the room at Vaako that it didn’t take a hell of a lot to follow. “Follow him. If I know then so do others.” Then she returned to the table, swift strides, just once glance back over her shoulder. 

It wasn’t a threat, he thought. It was a warning. 

The ship was a labyrinth but Riddick had come to know it well over the months he’d been there, corridors that led to corridors in endless curves and turns and sharp corners, dead ends, meaningless circles that seemed entirely without reason in an otherwise ordered place full of ordered people. He’d taken the time to memorise the turns and routes and times between locations in those first few days in case he’d needed an escape, treated it like just another slam because he hadn’t been sure, still wasn’t sure, that wasn’t exactly what it was. 

This time, though, it wasn’t an escape route he was walking. He woke that night and he waited, waiting till Vaako moved, till he left the bed like he did so often and dressed and left the room like he’d done so many nights before. Then he followed him, barefoot on the floors so he’d be silent, down corridors he knew frustratingly well, past rooms he’d sneaked inside just to see if he could, and before long he knew precisely where Vaako was headed. He gave him five minutes, loitering in the corridor outside, then he stepped inside the room. 

Purification chambers lined the walls, a hundred of them, more. And Vaako stood there on the catwalk between rows on rows, flanked by them, faces behind glass, leaning down heavily against the dull metal handrail; he looked up as Riddick stepped in. 

“I wondered how long it’d take you,” Vaako said. 

“Longer than it took your ex-wife,” Riddick replied. 

Vaako scowled. It was almost a very good impression of her without that being his intention at all; sometimes it was so totally fucking obvious the two of them had been married, and how long it had lasted. Sometimes he could even see why, when he saw them argue together over the table top in ops, when they glowered in corridors, when he saw just how much Vaako despised her. Of course, she’d betrayed and tortured him since the marriage, but for Necros that seemed kinda usual. Or not _unusual_ at the very least. 

“So you’ve not gone through with it.”

“No.” Vaako glanced at him briefly. “But you know that better than anyone.”

He guessed he did. Sharing a bed with the guy, seeing him every day the way he’d seen him every day for the past damn near five motherfucking years, fighting him, fucking him, watching him shave in the morning, he knew though for some dumbass reason it’d never occurred to him that it might be a problem with the locals. Vaako hadn’t been Purified since he’d gotten back to the fleet. He’d stopped throwing up as often, sure, kept his hair short, kept hydrated, but there were greys in his hair. He was aging. Riddick hadn’t thought to question why that was, and he didn’t feel too inclined to ask right then, either. So he stubbornly didn’t; they stood there in silence instead, leaning against the railing, looking over a sea of unconscious faces in the midst of the Purification process that Vaako had opted not to take since he’d gone home. 

“What do I do?” Vaako asked, and Riddick hated him for asking. 

“Are you asking me for advice?”

Vaako didn’t look at him. He pointedly avoided looking at him. “Perhaps.”

“Do it.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, what’s your other option?”

Vaako took a long, deep breath and exhaled it slowly, the sound loud over the low hum of the chambers. “Will you?”

“Will I _what_?”

“If I do it, will you do it too?”

“Get Purified?” Riddick laughed, loudly, unexpectedly, the sound swallowed in the vast room. “Did I ever make you think I would?”

Then Vaako finally did look at him, dark and hot with a bitter set to his mouth. “I Can’t keep you here as my fucking pet, Riddick,” he said. 

“Did I ask you to?”

“Fuck you.” He pushed himself back, away from the railing, stood there on the catwalk as he ran his hands over his face. “We should’ve killed you back on Helion.”

Riddick pulled himself up straight, watched him turn to him. “So do it now,” he said. 

Vaako stepped in slowly, too slowly for it to be an attack, too deliberate for it to be anything but. He got in close, close enough that Riddick could smell the shampoo in his hair, toothpaste on his breath, those little breeder touches Necros loved to hate because that was life distilled right down, that was the business of living, messy and loud. Then he brought one hand up and gripped tight at Riddick’s throat. He gripped tighter. He brought up his other hand, pressed in with his thumbs, made it hard for Riddick to breathe and then harder again. All Riddick did was reach up to pull off his goggles and toss them down onto the catwalk with a clatter to look at him, really _look_ at him there in the low glowing light of the Purification chambers, Vaako’s eyes on his.

He let him squeeze till his vision started to blur, just that long and then shoved him back; they both went down hard on the catwalk and they struggled, too close to the edge and a hundred-foot drop though that barely registered. Riddick’s goggles got kicked over as they clawed at each other, knees and hands, Riddick’s bare feet, Vaako’s blunt nails at his back till it wasn’t a fight anymore if it had ever been, till it was something hotter and worse and just like the first time, the very _first_ time, rubbing against each other to get off quicker than they maybe wanted to, desperate, angry, pretty much the opposite of comfortable. They were soiling good clothes so they’d both need to shower and change though fuck if that wasn’t the very, _very_ least of their problems. They’d got fish to fry the size of a fucking blue whale. 

“We’ll make Furya in three days,” Vaako said when they’d finished, his fists tight in the fabric of Riddick’s shirt. 

“Yeah, I know,” Riddick said, his voice harsh. He could still feel Vaako’s hands at his throat; he knew there’d be bruises, couldn’t say he gave a fuck.

Slowly, they stood, pulling each other up haphazardly, Riddick squinting against the light and Vaako shook his head, sighed as they both realised what had happened to his goggles. 

“Close your eyes,” he said, so Riddick closed his eyes. Vaako led him all the way back to their room that way, eyes closed in the over-bright corridors, one hand at the small of his back. And when they got there, he shut them back into the dark.

***

Furya was a fucking wasteland. It was gone. There was nothing left there but the ruins. 

“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Vaako said. 

Riddick looked out over the tumbledown buildings, dusty glass, bones, a fucking scorched earth and he guessed Vaako was right; he’d told him. He’d laid there in the dark night after night and explained what they’d done, how the Necromongers had killed his homeworld, stories of the skirmishes and the Furyan resistance almost like fond fucking memories. 

Vaako put one gloved hand on Riddick’s shoulder, the gesture unfamiliar though the proximity was something he knew pretty intimately. He squeezed, a fraction too tight, and that was familiar too, reminded him of the bruises he still had ringing almost all the way around his neck. They’d been wearing each other’s bruises for months. This was nothing new.

“You killed my planet,” Riddick said, the words sounding fucking stupid even to him. 

“I told you that years ago.” 

He had. He’d told him about the invasion, how they’d landed and he’d led the ground troops. The Furyans had been strong and strong-willed, had no intention of going peacefully because conversion was the last thing they’d submit to and that more or less suited the Necros; for a people who worshipped death, death held no particular fear, and they enjoyed the fight. They’d stayed there for months in the end, killing Furyans, hacking at them, rooting them out till their resistance movement was all out topside in the streets in some final revolt that Vaako put down with his soldiers. They shot down the ships that tried to flee. In the end, thousands on thousands were dead and just seventeen converted; the first sixteen didn’t last long in the fleet. The Purifier had been the last of them. 

As they walked in the ruins, Riddick had to admit he had no idea what he’d expected except this pretty much wasn’t it, even though he’d been told more than once, over and over. Everything was dust and ash from the final nuke from orbit, nothing was familiar though he guessed there was pretty much no way for it to be at all. He came down into a crouch on the balls of his feet in what was left of the street and took a handful of red-gold dust, let it slip through his fingers then wiped off his palm on his pants, the dust lingering there. 

“That fucking rock Krone dumped me on might as well’ve been Furya,” he said, then popped back up to his feet. “Why in the name of fuck did you bring me here?”

“You’d have wasted your life looking for it if I hadn’t.”

And that was true, he thought. That was fair, he’d have done that in spite of everything Vaako had said, in spite of the fact he’d believed every word. Except now, of course, he had no fucking goal left. Boohoo. Boo-fucking-hoo. 

They walked around for maybe an hour as the sun set behind the hills, as the planet went blacker and blacker until Riddick could take off the spare goggles that were now his only pair till the Necros whipped up some more but they weren’t exactly hot on eyewear of any kind. Maybe Furya had been beautiful once, savage round the edges, but who the fuck knew since the Necro fleet had burned it to the ground and so they went back up to the ship in the shitty little skiff and Riddick stomped around their quarters like he’d lost something he’d never had. He felt like some kind of holy fucking idiot, caring so damn much about a planet he couldn’t remember, and Vaako left him there to seethe to himself. That seemed logical, except he didn’t come back. He was gone too long. It had finally fucking happened. 

He went to the Purification chambers first, checked every motherfucking last one of them for Vaako’s face behind the glass with a sense of unsettled ire building up when he wasn’t there. He checked ops and there was no one there at all, checked the troops’ barracks, started checking the damn ship systematically room by room when it struck him; he went to Krone’s room. She was there, dressing, unperturbed by his presence. 

“Where is he?” he asked. 

“Where do you _think_ he is?” she replied, no need to ask who he’d meant. 

And, of course, right then he knew. Vaako was back in the cells because where else would he be, after Furya, after everything? They’d lock him up again, because like a total fucking ass Riddick had failed to see it coming. He fucking _hated_ politics. This time it wasn’t even like he could say he hadn’t tried, though he guessed he hadn’t tried hard.

“The commanders are gonna kill him,” he said. 

“It’s likely.” She glanced at him as she finished dressing, tugging up a zipper over her back. .

“Why didn’t they take me?”

“I told them I’d take care of you.”

“You told them you’d kill me? And they _believed_ you?”

She smiled. “I told them _we_ would kill _him_.”

“And they believed _that_?”

“Think about it,” He cocked his head. “You’re an imbecile. Just come to the throne room, Riddick, and follow my lead.”

The problem was, the damn fool obvious problem was, that short of breaking Vaako out of the cell and running for the hills, which had always been a fucking awful plan just for the record, all he could do was trust her. It wasn’t until later, till they were standing there in the throne room with Vaako bleeding on the floor, that he thought to ask himself why he hadn’t just cut and run without him. It would’ve been simpler, but his life hadn’t been simple in years.

It was over quickly. The whole thing was fucking weird but it was over quickly; Krone killed the commander who’d sparked the whole thing with one easy thrust of a blade Riddick had taught her to use and then she turned to the others, chin high, challenging, blade turning in her hand. Riddick hoisted Vaako to his feet, and she looked at him. 

“Say you abdicate,” she hissed. 

Vaako wasn’t in much of a state to say anything at that precise moment, semi-conscious and heavy against him. 

“I abdicate,” Riddick said instead, loud enough for the room to hear because he guessed that was the point when they all knew he could speak for both of them. Vaako spluttered, coughed, opened his eyes and looked at him as he got his feet beneath him with a small but thoroughly sardonic smile. Riddick guessed he’d heard after all. 

“I nominate Krone in my place,” Vaako said. He didn’t need prompting.

“Seconded,” said the nearest commander. The motion passed uncontested. And as the two of them headed out unchecked for the nearest shuttle bay, the lady was being hailed as lord marshal. She had more power than she’d ever wanted, all to herself.

Riddick was pretty sure they’d never know if she’d planned it all along or she’d just taken advantage but he decided as they launched and left the Necro fleet behind that he just didn’t care either way. In the end, she deserved everything she’d got.

***

When they ran, the Necros didn’t follow. 

There was fuck all in the way of supplies in the skiff they’d taken, no food, damn near no water, just a pitiful med kit because hey, apparently that was just the way the Necros rolled, to hell with you if you needed patching the fuck up beyond a maybe-sterile gauze or a band aid. They went two days then landed on the first habitable world they found, sniffed out water, spent longer than they wanted to admit trapping flighty little birds that kept slipping away, left again before they could find out if the place was harbouring anything that wanted to eat them or if the Necros had changed their mind and sent a ship to shoot them out of the sky. 

Another three days, another planet, fish this time, a couple of days down on the surface to get enough on board so they could go a couple of weeks without another stop. No living planets after that for three weeks and so rations got short but Vaako had the constellations in his head, navigated from the co-pilot’s seat like he was fucking prescient though pretty much all he said in a whole goddamn month after that was just enough to give direction. Riddick guessed he understood; he’d lost everything, had everything he’d wanted then been made to give it up and all he had to show for it was scars and grey hairs and a murdering son of a bitch sitting in the pilot’s seat there next to him. He’d’ve been pretty pissed if he’d been Vaako, too. 

They made their way back to civilisation as fast as they could, which was a hell of a lot faster than they’d come, something about not stopping for conquest or having the whole goddamn fleet slowing them down that meant even with the occasional stop for provisions – caught on uninhabited worlds first, then stolen or bartered as they came closer in – they made it back to systems with real names in three and a half months. Fucking Necros had no cryosleep or it’d’ve felt a whole hell of a lot faster and the little skiff wouldn’t’ve wound up smelling like some funky mix of dried fish, half-rancid meat, sex and used gym socks. They fucked so damn much while they were busy not talking, all over the damn skiff, the pilot’s seat, floors, that lube was right at the top of the grocery list when they came to worlds with names and Riddick took over navigation because now he knew where the fuck they were. He guessed he’d had worse. 

“Where are we going?” Vaako asked one day, waking in the co-pilot’s seat with the seam of the leather imprinted down his cheek and Riddick wondered idly what he’d do if he opened that seam with his pocket knife. Maybe he’d let him. 

“I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought,” he said, at last. His knife stayed sheathed. 

“Head for Lazarus,” Vaako said. “You know the way.” And he closed his eyes again. 

He knew the way. Even if he hadn’t, the Lazarus system was practically fucking intergalactically signposted in bright pink neon as a haven for gamblers and thieves and general scallywags of all varieties; nice folk kept away from there and there’d never been much law to speak of except some vague notion of revenge and retribution and honour among thieves that kept the peace around the system, such as it was. 

They sold the skiff on Lazarus 4. They checked into the same old boarding house they’d been in before, more than once before, and tossed what little shit they still owned onto the table in its raggedy holdall. Riddick had watched, hung back at the front desk while his surly-ass companion had an argument with the manager about how _Vaako_ was his name, one name, not first name, not last, not fucking “Vaako Vaako” like some sort of a backwards jackass, just Vaako. Apparently they’d stopped running, stopped hiding, because when the manager jutted his chin at Riddick and asked who his friend was, Vaako said _Richard B Riddick, maybe you’ve heard of him_.

“You should get yourself a first name,” Riddick said, as he closed the door. “Or a last name. Make it easier.”

“ _Now_ you want to make things easier?” Vaako said, closing the blinds. “And you use your first name when? On wanted posters?” He leaned back against the wall, the whole room familiar because they were all the same. “Richard. Can I call you _Dick_?”

Riddick chuckled lowly as he took off his goggles in the low light, as he tossed them onto the bed and stepped up closer. “One day that smart mouth’s gonna get you into trouble,” he said, and Vaako didn’t move as he leaned in, as he leaned against him, except to uncross his arms and slip his hands down to the curve of Riddick’s ass, pulling him in sharply against him. When they kissed, it was hot and slow and hard and nearly painful, the way it always was, the way it always had been. 

They took the transport out to Lazarus 2 the next day, a 20-minute commute sitting shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, as close as they could be without crawling into each other’s lap, not exactly comfortable but comfort had never exactly been high on their list of priorities. Riddick didn’t care who stared, guessed Vaako didn’t either. They walked together into the office there at the Lazarus 2 fight pits and Vaako put his hands down on the high, grubby counter and asked nicely for a job. Nicely, of course, was a relative term. 

“Vaako and Riddick,” the owner said, a small guy as grubby as the counter, cheerful with greed as he saw them and failing at looking like that wasn’t the point at all. “Can you start tonight?”

They started that night, fought as a team like they’d sometimes done before, had three matches back to back because why the hell not. They ate in the bar three doors down then went back to the room and fought again, hurting each other more than their opponents had till Vaako was inside him, blunt nails at his back, at the back of his neck, pushing him into the mattress as Riddick pushed back from the headboard for leverage. Riddick was pretty surprised they didn’t break the goddamn bed, then they did it all again the next day, and the next. 

Two months passed and no one came for them. After three they moved out of the shitty room in the shitty boarding house into a shitty apartment, a bigger bed but they still woke up tangled in sheets and each other every day. They bought disposable plates and shit so no one had to wash, paid a girl down the street to take care of their laundry. The bathroom sink was always covered in flakes of dried blood no matter how often they cleaned because Vaako opened up all of Riddick’s old scars, one by one night by night with the razor-sharp edge of another replacement knife, made him remember every one, all those memories sharpened and then filled with him instead. Vaako’s hair grew and he gave up on cutting it. And after four months, five, _still_ no one had come for them. 

“Do you still believe?” Riddick asked one night, outside, walking back from the transport, still aching from his fight. Sometimes they had Riddick fight in pitch darkness, invested in night vision for the audience for the spectacle of it so they could all see the creepy shine on his eyes as he picked opponents off one by one. Sometimes Vaako put on Necromonger armour and gave them all a cheap thrill that Riddick never shared. 

“In the faith?” Vaako said. “Absolutely.”

“And in your people?”

Vaako smiled wryly. “Not at all.”

He’d never ask but he guessed he got why that was; if the Necros believed the dead all went to populate the Underverse, if they took it as some damn fool holy mission to cease all life in _this_ verse, politics and petty-ass fucking rivalries should’ve meant nothing to any of them. The top level elite Necros were all just locked into the same cycle of living and fighting to live and fighting their way to the top of the heap as everyone else was. Vaako could only ever have led them if they’d believed the way he did, but Riddick was pretty sure no one believed the way he did. 

Vaako unlocked the door, stepped inside in the dark; Riddick followed and locked the door behind. 

Maybe this was what Aereon had wanted all along, he thought, the destabilisation of Necromonger politics breaking them slowly apart, a cascade reaction so vast and deep and so fucking boring that Riddick didn’t have it in him to give a damn. Maybe the Necros would wipe out the verse and maybe they’d wipe out each other but he was pretty sure he’d be dead by the time either eventuality actually came to pass. Somehow that felt reassuring. 

Vaako poured them both a drink in the dark, two shots of vodka that he’d gotten good at serving with no light once he’d memorised the layout of the apartment, though sometimes Riddick would move shit around just for shits and giggles and Vaako would glare in his general direction in the darkness, venomless like he’d expected it and the way Riddick pushed on his bruised shins and elbows after wasn’t some kind of twisted-ass endearment. Sometimes Riddick really wished he knew for sure if his eyes were Furyan or if he’d gotten that surgical shine job in some backwater slam after all. But fuck, they didn’t need two half-blind sons of bitches trying to get along in the sunlight, even if the time Vaako tried on his goggles, kept them on while they screwed, had amused the fuck out of him. 

Riddick took a glass and downed the shot; it was cheap shit and burned all the way down. He guessed if mercs and the fights and the fucking Necros didn’t get them, liver damage probably would.

They went to bed not long after, stripped down and stretched out, one of Riddick’s hands wrapped around one of Vaako’s wrists, Vaako’s bare chest against Riddick’s back, his breath on his neck. Vaako hadn’t made a decision, back with the fleet, hadn’t decided if he’d get Purified or not, and they both knew that non-decision was pretty much a decision in and of itself. Riddick didn’t question it. It was only complicated if they let it be. 

Maybe in the end they’d go after the Necros again, find out what had happened to Boss Johns like he really gave a damn or needed that loose end tying up in a neat little bow. Maybe they’d set out to find the threshold between verses and that’d maybe satisfy Vaako’s faith that he’d somehow never lost in all that time and all that shit. Maybe they’d stay there on Lazarus 4 and live there lives as prize fighters till Underverse came, each death bringing Vaako closer to his god. _Maybe_. 

Riddick closed his eyes. He tightened his grip on Vaako’s wrist. Everything was maybe but whatever they did, he knew for some fucked up reason they’d be doing it together.


End file.
